Calling Back
by Reebus
Summary: Another take on how Susan is eventually redeemed. My first fanfic. Overhauled a bit. Thanks for the reviews! I welcome more suggestions for improvement.
1. Pretending

Disclaimer: C.S. Lewis created Susan, Aslan, and the rest of the Chronicles of Narnia.

Calling Back

Tonight was not one of the good nights.

Susan knew why, of course. The second anniversary of the accident was fast approaching, and it was only natural that she should feel worse at this time. And then, too, she kept thinking of those games of Let's Pretend that they had played. It was only natural that thinking about her childhood with her brothers and sister would make her miss them all the more. Trying to be analytical, as her boy-friend Marshall had been teaching her, she had traced her thoughts of Let's Pretend back and was certain she had found what had triggered them. It had been that country railway station she and Marshall had gone through on the way to visit his mother. Of course the train ride and all had reminded her of the aftermath of the accident, more painfully than she had admitted to Marshall. That particular station, though, had been so sleepy, so empty, so deep in the country that she had stumbled on an entirely different set of memories. She had almost been able to see herself and Lucy and the boys in the seat on the platform, all their boxes and trunks around them, spinning stories as they waited for the train that would take her and Lu back to school. She had remembered the name of the prince they had made up, Caspian, like one of those seas on the continent. And then Lucy and Edmund had made up another story about the same prince the following summer. They had had to stay at Aunt Alberta and Uncle Harold's house—of course they had wanted something to take their minds off having to stay there!

_Good old Lu, good old Ed,_ Susan thought, trying to smile fondly, but her grief was still too near. The attempt to smile only made hot tears squeeze out of the corners of her eyes, wetting her pillow. Again. She was so tired of her pillow being wet, of the tears trickling across her temples into her ears as she lay awake in the darkness. In the daytime recently, she had been able to forget her grief for a while. Parties could distract her. So could Marshall, some of the time. His coolness and seriousness had given her something to hold onto when her giddy, girlish world had seemed so terribly hollow in the wake of losing the only people who had ever meant anything real. Marshall had taken her to lectures, debates, book readings. The intellectual stimulation could briefly push her despair aside, dry out her eyes. But at night, alone in the dark and quiet…

She drew a ragged breath. Tonight was not a good night.

Perhaps tonight, she could simply think about Let's Pretend stories until she fell asleep. It was dreadfully childish, of course, and she could never tell Marshall or her other friends about it. Not that she had ever mentioned the old stories to Marshall; he would have psycho-analysed her dreadfully. But the games _had_ been such fun…all those names and places they had made up. Narnia. That one name alone brought back so many memories. Of course they had had to create neighbouring countries as well, like friendly Archenland and dangerous, mysterious Calormen. Calormen was where Prince Rabadash (and there was a ridiculous name; how _had_ they thought of it?) had come from, asking for her hand in marriage and nearly kidnapping her—

Susan opened her eyes in some alarm. For a moment she had really been almost able to _see_ the charming, mysterious, deceitful Calormene prince—his exotic clothing, his strange smile, his dark eyes. Perhaps Marshall and their friends would be right if they said that thinking about all these old childhood games was regressive and psychologically unhealthy (not that she would tell them about it). Yes, it was really quite a bit frightening that the imaginary character had become so real for a moment. Plainly, she should clear her head of this nonsense and go on to sleep. It was all quite ridiculous.

Ridiculous, that's what they had called Rabadash later—Rabadash the Ridiculous! Of course, she hadn't been there to see him turned into a donkey. She rather wished she had; it would have been quite amusing, and he had certainly deserved it—

_He wasn't real, Susan,_ she told herself sharply. _Of course you didn't see him turn into a donkey, because it never happened._ She was letting her thoughts get quite out of hand. All this Let's Pretend, plus her grief over losing her family—tonight it was working her up into something of a state. Why, if Marshall knew the things she was thinking right now, he would say she should go to a sanitarium!

_Well, don't think about Rabadash then,_ she thought, annoyed. _Just think about all the silly names we made up. Like Tumnus the Dwarf—no, that's not right—_

No, it was Trumpkin that had been a dwarf, Prince Caspian's friend. Tumnus had been a faun (and fancy them remembering mythology so well when they were just children!), Lucy's friend. And Mr. and Mrs. Beaver—they hadn't been very original with those names, but they had made up for it with the Giant Rumblebuffin who was restored after being a statue—or was it Wimbleweather? No, Wimbleweather had been in the story about Caspian. With Reepicheep the valiant mouse.

"…_a tail is the honour and glory of a Mouse…"_

That memory really did make her smile fondly and even chuckle, although the threat of tears was still very near. She told herself she needed to keep thinking, like Marshall always said. Grief was only a chemical reaction, and one could distract oneself from it with other chemical reactions, such as thoughts. Although Marshall wouldn't have recommended thinking about this particular topic…

One of the oddest names had been Puddleglum, the Marsh-wiggle—of course, Eustace had made that one up, but then he always had been a bit strange. There was no denying that Lucy and Edmund had been a good influence on him that summer they stayed there, though. It had been quite original of him to invent an entire species, certainly not the kind of thing he would have done before. A nice addition to the stories, too, even though she herself had only heard snatches of his tale about Prince Somebody—

"…_how do you call him? Billian? Trillian?"_

At any rate, he had been Caspian's son, and Eustace and his friend Jill had been assigned the task of rescuing him. But now she felt the prickling of tears again, since poor Jill and Eustace had died in the accident also. She still needed to keep thinking.

They had made up a castle with quite an odd name. Cair Paravel, that was it. Memories crowded into her head, of feasts and dancing. _Feasts and dancing that we made up,_ she tried to remind herself. These memories were so strong, though. And they had found the castle again in the second story, when they had landed there when they were called back—

_Called back by my own horn!_ Susan remembered. My horn which I lost but Dr. Cornelius found, the horn I blew when the wolf came after me and then Peter came to save me, my horn Father Christmas gave me—and he gave us tea which was so nice that cold morning, and he wasn't silly or funny but he made us very, very glad—

_No he didn't, don't be silly, you didn't really meet Father Christmas, and you never had a magic horn. It was just imaginary._ Susan took a deep breath in the darkness and tried to stop her thoughts, but this time she couldn't, even as she argued with them—

"_She has kept me out for a long time, but I have got in at last."_

And she could feel her new horn in her hand as Father Christmas told Lucy why she shouldn't be in the battle and cracked his whip and rushed away…

_"Long live the true King!"_

He had been able to get in because something had changed, something important—of course, it was at the back of all the stories, even though she had been trying for some reason not to think of it—it had been because the Lion had been there.

C_ome back to reality, Susan!_ she told herself irritatedly. _So made up a Lion. We had to have Someone in charge of things, protecting us, even in Let's Pretend, because that's a natural human instinct, and we gave him a name, we named him Aslan—_

She had no sooner named him than he _came_, crashing through her imagination, shattering Let's Pretend to pieces, tossing golden light from his mane—


	2. Knowing

Disclaimer: C.S. Lewis created Susan, Aslan, and the rest of the Chronicles of Narnia.

Chapter 2.

Susan's eyes flew open and she sat up, gasping for breath, staring wildly around her room—was he really there?

Of course not. She had seen him much more clearly than Rabadash or Reepicheep or even Father Christmas, but her bedroom was its usual nighttime self, dark and empty except for her and her furniture.

_Of course he's not here, Susan, he's not real_, she told herself firmly. She shook herself mentally and reminded herself that she needed to get to sleep and stop thinking about all these childhood games. _He was just a very compelling character. A God-figure or something, Marshall would probably say. It's only natural that he might seem real, but it's regressive. Reflects a superstitious mindset that you should keep trying to overcome._

Nonetheless she did not lie back down or close her eyes. Instead she kept looking around her room, verifying that it was indeed still empty and quiet, that the pictures and doorknobs and such weren't turning into lion's faces while she wasn't watching…He had done that once, the Lion had, or maybe several times, speaking to people out of pictures and things…

"…_That gold lion's head on the wall came to life and spoke to me…"_

_No he didn't, because it was just stories,_ she snapped at herself. Just stories, and the Lion wasn't real, just like he wasn't really there when Lucy thought she saw him in the woods when they were trying to find Prince Caspian…

_But he _was _real that time_, she remembered, the thought like cold water in her face. Lucy had seen him, and they had followed him, and finally Susan and even the unbelieving dwarf had seen that he was real…

_Yes, real in the story, you twit, but for heaven's sake get a handle on yourself!_ Susan tried to breathe evenly, brushed away tears impatiently, and reminded herself what Marshall would think of her for all these thoughts.

_But it was such fun—I _want_ it to be real,_ some part of her mind pleaded. She shook her head fiercely and tried to impose order on her thoughts. _Think of Marshall instead of all these imaginary characters,_ she directed herself. _What would he tell you about all this?_

And indeed she could almost see Marshall in front of her, almost hear his calm, rational voice explaining things away.

"Of course you want it to be real," he would say. "It's only natural that childhood fantasies seem more pleasant than the real, grown-up world. But that's part of growing up and being modern, putting away childhood games and dealing with harsh reality. Accepting that the universe is nonsensical and meeting it on its own terms without old-fashioned superstitions or childhood props." Yes, that was the sort of thing. The real world obviously wasn't very pleasant, but resorting to childhood games was silly and wouldn't help.

"_Suppose this black pit…_is_ the only world…strikes me as a pretty poor one…"_

Fragments of a conversation she was sure she had not taken part in floated unbidden through her mind. They struck a jarring note against Marshall's dry, stern reality.

_Well, so what if it's a poor world, _she thought, tossing her head impatiently. _That's the glory of being modern, knowing that the universe is horrid and that the old superstitions don't change that at all. Nor do children playing games._ She took a deep breath and gave a satisfied nod. She was learning to keep her feet on the ground, to stay practical, she told herself. Perhaps now she could get some sleep. _We were just babies playing games…it was only natural._

_"Just babies making up a game…babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow…"_

"Oh, bother! This is so frustrating!" she said aloud. "I wasn't even _in_ that story!" Indeed, she had long since discovered the real world, which at that time had consisted mainly of parties and friends and make-up and nylons, by the time Eustace and Jill had gone off to rescue—by the time Eustace and Jill had come into the game.

Susan decided that she knew what she needed to do. She turned on her little reading lamp and picked up a book she had bought on a recent outing with Marshall. It was quite a modern book, bright and skeptical and free of superstition and fantasy, very open and frank about all aspects of life, especially sex…just what she needed to bring her mind back to firm, solid earth. She could read it and come back to hard, dry reality, dry out the tears which kept stinging her eyes, and banish all thoughts of—the Lion—

But she had hardly read three sentences when she flung the book away in annoyance. Really, it was _so_ horribly boring. It had seemed quite interesting earlier, when she had been thinking about all the intellectual things she could say to Marshall about it. Somehow she wasn't in the mood for it right now. Let's Pretend had spoiled it in some way. The stories they'd made up as children seemed much more interesting at the moment than the grown-up, modern book about reality.

"…_A play-world which licks your real world hollow…"_

She sighed and pressed her face into her hands. _Why_ couldn't she stop thinking about Let's Pretend? Why couldn't she simply lie down and go to sleep? But now she was afraid that if she lay down and closed her eyes the Lion would come again. She was afraid of even saying his name, lest she call him.

"_You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you."_

But he couldn't have been calling, of course, because he wasn't real. Just a compelling character in a story. A very compelling character, her favourite one. Yes, now that she thought about it, he had indeed been her favourite character. There was certainly no doubt that she _wanted_ him to be real, wanted it rather badly—and then her tears began flowing in earnest, for she could no longer deny that the one thing she wanted above all else, more even than having Lu and the boys and her parents back again, was for Aslan to be real, to visit her again…

And then she no longer cared what Marshall or anyone else thought, or even if Aslan was real or not, if only he would come to her, and she sobbed, sobbed as she had after the funeral, sobbed as she and Lucy had the night Aslan was killed… _Oh Aslan, Aslan, why can't you be real, why won't you come back to me, don't leave me here alone, please come to me, Aslan, please…_

There was no noise, but she looked up anyway, and he was _there_, standing between her bed and the window as though he had been there all along.

She didn't wonder how he could fit there, and she couldn't speak, but she knelt on her bed and buried her face and arms in his mane and sobbed until her bitter tears became cleansing ones and she could allow the strength that always flowed from him to envelop her. Of course he would come when she called, Aslan who had not let even death stop him from coming back to her.

_"Oh, you're real, you're real! Oh, Aslan!"_

All the while, the voice in the back of her head that could never be silent was rattling on about how this was all a delusion or only a dream and that she would wake up in the morning to find that it had never happened, but the rest of her no longer cared much about that voice. It wasn't until later that she realized that he never actually spoke, so it must have been his eyes that told her how he really had been there all along, not just tonight but always, and that showed her the thousand times and ways he had helped her, had been calling to her, that told her how he had been waiting for years for her to call back to him. It must have been his eyes that told her how he and only he felt her grief as much and even more than she did. And she sat and stared into his eyes and breathed in the perfume that hung about him, and he breathed on her…

She awoke to what sounded like the milkman on the street outside. Clean, early-morning sunlight was streaming in through her window. Her room looked fresh and new; even the furniture seemed to beam at her.

_Of course it would, Aslan was here._ She breathed deeply—the very air seemed refreshed—and smiled. She had not awoken this early in—oh, ages. She marveled at how light her heart felt. Not that her grief was gone—indeed, some parts of it seemed keener than before. But she knew she could bear it now, now that she had found Aslan again. She shook her head as the chattering voice in the back of her head began its arguing. It said that of course it was only a dream, naturally there wasn't really a Lion in her room in the middle of the night—and Susan laughed aloud. That voice, which had kept her from believing in Aslan when Lucy said she'd seen him, had kept her from believing in Narnia for years, seemed ridiculously frail and silly in the face of the Truth she had met in the night.

_"What's that? How will you know? Oh, you'll _know_ all right."_

Yes, she knew now. Susan laughed again, but paused in swift wonder, for it seemed for a moment that she heard not just herself laughing but also, resonating through her room, the almost-roar of a Lion's laughter.


End file.
